5 ms·

There's a lot here that resonates with me beyond matters of intelligence. In my spare time I'm a contact juggler. If you don't know what that it is, it involve

by iMark 11y ago

There's a lot here that resonates with me beyond matters of intelligence. In my spare time I'm a contact juggler. If you don't know what that it is, it involves rolling balls around the body. David Bowie in Labyrinth is usually a good reference point. And I'm good at it. I'm good at it because I've been doing it for nearly a decade and I've put in the hours. I don't think I learned particularly quickly, or even particularly well, but I stuck with it and worked hard to improve. I'm not shy about telling people that, but many still seem to assume it's some form of innate talent, no matter how much I reassure them otherwise. It's as though people would rather accept their own status quos rather than believe that effort and commitment is enough to improve their lot. Yes, it might take years to reach a level of skill in a given discipline, but those years will pass anyway. Wouldn't it be nice to have something more to show for all that time than a depression on the sofa in front of the tv?

visakanv 11y ago
That's consistent with my experience as a musician. I'm no prodigy. I don't have a musican background. When I started out, I couldn't sing in tune and I couldn't clap in time. All I did was dick around on the guitar on and off for over a decade. I've gotten pretty good at it just by sucking at it for a long time, and reducing the suckage one little bit at a time. Professional musicians simply do the same thing, but far more intensively, rigorously, systematically. Hours and hours of practice day after week after month after year. I once transcribed a post I read about this called The Mundanity of Excellence, by Daniel Chambliss: http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excellence-by-daniel-chambliss/ http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excell... EDIT: Also, to be fair, I think what stops a lot of people is– when they start out, they really suck, and they simply can't envision the path from sucking to being good. Because it involves many qualitative transformations. The mythologizing we do of successful people doesn't help. We get told this story about how all the people at the top one day discovered that they loved something so much that they wanted to work on it really hard forever. If this narrative changed, I think more people would get good at more things.
- iMark 11y ago
  The learning period is a good point. Contact juggling has a rather cliff-like learning curve and many people don't progress because of it. A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I hsf people around early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made all the difference.
  - mitchtbaum 11y ago
    > A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I had people around early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made all the difference. One of my dad's greatest pieces of advice he gave me came as we drove back from a wrestling match I lost, like every single one before that one. As I hung my head in tired shame, he said, "people show more character in defeat than in victory."
    - triplesec 11y ago
      If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; Rudyard Kipling, If. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772
- mbrock 11y ago
  I remember insisting very strongly to teachers and friends that my body was just simply not cut out to play barre chords on a guitar. I was convinced that it was impossible. Turns out... it's not. With music the contrast between the desired outcome and the actual results for a beginner is extremely, painfully, embarrassingly obvious. The whole point is that you want to make beautiful sounds, not horrible sounds. You want to be in tune, in rhythm, melodious, but instead you feel clumsy, weak, confused, tone deaf, and awkward. So that can easily kill your whole motivation if you don't really internalize the idea of progressive learning. John Holt's book "How Children Learn" has some thoughts about learning instruments. > There is a special sense in which it may be fair to say that the child scientist is a less efficient thinker than the adult scientist. He is not as good at cutting out unnecessary and useless information, at simplifying the problem, at figuring out how to ask questions whose answers will give him the most information. Thus, a trained adult thinker, seeing a cello for the first time, would probably do in a few seconds what it takes a child much longer to do—bow each of the strings, to see what sounds they give, and then see what effect holding down a string with the left hand has on the sound made by that string > That is, if—and it is a very big if—he could bring himself to touch the cello at all. Where the young child, at least until his thinking has been spoiled by adults, has a great advantage is in situations—and many, even most real life situations are like this—where there is so much seemingly senseless data that it is impossible to tell what questions to ask. He is much better at taking in this kind of data; he is better able to tolerate its confusion; and he is much better at picking out the patterns, hearing the faint signal amid all the noise. Above all, he is much less likely than adults to make hard and fast conclusions on the basis of too little data, or having made such conclusions, to refuse to consider any new data that does not support them. And these are the vital skills of thought which, in our hurry to get him thinking the way we do, we may very well stunt or destroy in the process of "educating him". > But the greatest difference between children and adults is that most of the children to whom I offer a turn on the cello accept it, while most adults, particularly if they have never played any other instrument, refuse it. One thing that really sparked my motivation for music even while I was sucking horribly was the realization that you can make pretty neat melodies in very simple ways, for example by just improvising on the 0 2 3 5 7 9 10 frets on the high E string and sometimes hitting the low E string for bass—this way you can sound kind of like an Indian raga without too much practice.
enginnr 11y ago
I remember the painful feeling in college of solving problems in reverse. That is to say; when presented with a problem, there are no intrinsic reasons propelling me to solve it with any meaningful gusto. Only extrinsic motivators like getting a paper in on time, or adding another small jigsaw piece to the body of knowledge I must somehow cache in my head until exam time. An utter waste of time and not relevant to the real world. That is why I dropped out.
drumdance 11y ago
Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, talks about this in his last book. From memory, I believe he postulates that there are two kinds of people when it comes to cultivating talent. The first kind is the one who is willing to try the same thing over and over and over. An example of this is learning to spin a basketball on your finger. If you're willing to try it a thousand times, eventually you will get very good at it. The second kind is less patient and gets bored repeating things. So for them it's more about constantly learning something new. I don't know that these are mutually exclusive, but perhaps people lean toward one form over the other.
- mbrock 11y ago
  People also seem to be different in how much they can or want to focus on a single thing or a small number of things, versus how much they want to jump around and study tons of stuff in a broad way. I'm very much the second way. The pretentious word is "polymath" but for me it's just that my attention works that way. It does seem to have something to do with being somehow fundamentally restless. I really don't want to be a graduate student because it seems terribly excruciating and I don't think I have the capacity, not because I'm stupid but because I'm restless. But I would love to hang out with graduate students, from different fields. In a utopian world, I could get food and shelter by just being a guy who spends 12 hours a day reading about different things, re-explaining them, connecting them and introducing people to different ideas. (Politically charged digression: I think a basic income would free up truly enormous potential for innovation, if the innate creativity and productivity of people were disconnected from the tedious demand for employment and funding. Talking critically about the economics of it before trying it seems ridiculous because the entire point, it seems to me, is that totally novel things would happen.)
  - wellpast 11y ago
    > The pretentious word is "polymath" The less pretentious word is "jack of all trades".
    - FatalBaboon 11y ago
wellpast 11y ago
Point your skeptics to Carol Dweck's research and book, Mindset. http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/ http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/ The writing can be repetitive but the core ideas and science IMO should be read and understood by everyone especially those who think that talent is solely innate.
mekal 11y ago
maybe they're just trying to compliment you. i mean what else could they say...."great work ethic mark! your fascination with balls is astounding."
anon4 11y ago
I think this guy http://english.bouletcorp.com/2015/05/27/warriors-good-fortune/ http://english.bouletcorp.com/2015/05/27/warriors-good-fortu... probably illustrated it best how it takes skill, determination and luck. And how we shouldn't just discount the last one.
1812Overture 11y ago
There's no limit to what you can achieve if you sit around playing with your balls all day.

by iMark 11y ago

visakanv 11y ago

That's consistent with my experience as a musician. I'm no prodigy. I don't have a musican background. When I started out, I couldn't sing in tune and I couldn't clap in time. All I did was dick around on the guitar on and off for over a decade. I've gotten pretty good at it just by sucking at it for a long time, and reducing the suckage one little bit at a time. Professional musicians simply do the same thing, but far more intensively, rigorously, systematically. Hours and hours of practice day after week after month after year. I once transcribed a post I read about this called The Mundanity of Excellence, by Daniel Chambliss: http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excellence-by-daniel-chambliss/ http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excell... EDIT: Also, to be fair, I think what stops a lot of people is– when they start out, they really suck, and they simply can't envision the path from sucking to being good. Because it involves many qualitative transformations. The mythologizing we do of successful people doesn't help. We get told this story about how all the people at the top one day discovered that they loved something so much that they wanted to work on it really hard forever. If this narrative changed, I think more people would get good at more things.

iMark 11y ago
The learning period is a good point. Contact juggling has a rather cliff-like learning curve and many people don't progress because of it. A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I hsf people around early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made all the difference.
- mitchtbaum 11y ago
  > A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I had people around early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made all the difference. One of my dad's greatest pieces of advice he gave me came as we drove back from a wrestling match I lost, like every single one before that one. As I hung my head in tired shame, he said, "people show more character in defeat than in victory."
  - triplesec 11y ago
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; Rudyard Kipling, If. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772
mbrock 11y ago
I remember insisting very strongly to teachers and friends that my body was just simply not cut out to play barre chords on a guitar. I was convinced that it was impossible. Turns out... it's not. With music the contrast between the desired outcome and the actual results for a beginner is extremely, painfully, embarrassingly obvious. The whole point is that you want to make beautiful sounds, not horrible sounds. You want to be in tune, in rhythm, melodious, but instead you feel clumsy, weak, confused, tone deaf, and awkward. So that can easily kill your whole motivation if you don't really internalize the idea of progressive learning. John Holt's book "How Children Learn" has some thoughts about learning instruments. > There is a special sense in which it may be fair to say that the child scientist is a less efficient thinker than the adult scientist. He is not as good at cutting out unnecessary and useless information, at simplifying the problem, at figuring out how to ask questions whose answers will give him the most information. Thus, a trained adult thinker, seeing a cello for the first time, would probably do in a few seconds what it takes a child much longer to do—bow each of the strings, to see what sounds they give, and then see what effect holding down a string with the left hand has on the sound made by that string > That is, if—and it is a very big if—he could bring himself to touch the cello at all. Where the young child, at least until his thinking has been spoiled by adults, has a great advantage is in situations—and many, even most real life situations are like this—where there is so much seemingly senseless data that it is impossible to tell what questions to ask. He is much better at taking in this kind of data; he is better able to tolerate its confusion; and he is much better at picking out the patterns, hearing the faint signal amid all the noise. Above all, he is much less likely than adults to make hard and fast conclusions on the basis of too little data, or having made such conclusions, to refuse to consider any new data that does not support them. And these are the vital skills of thought which, in our hurry to get him thinking the way we do, we may very well stunt or destroy in the process of "educating him". > But the greatest difference between children and adults is that most of the children to whom I offer a turn on the cello accept it, while most adults, particularly if they have never played any other instrument, refuse it. One thing that really sparked my motivation for music even while I was sucking horribly was the realization that you can make pretty neat melodies in very simple ways, for example by just improvising on the 0 2 3 5 7 9 10 frets on the high E string and sometimes hitting the low E string for bass—this way you can sound kind of like an Indian raga without too much practice.

enginnr 11y ago

I remember the painful feeling in college of solving problems in reverse. That is to say; when presented with a problem, there are no intrinsic reasons propelling me to solve it with any meaningful gusto. Only extrinsic motivators like getting a paper in on time, or adding another small jigsaw piece to the body of knowledge I must somehow cache in my head until exam time. An utter waste of time and not relevant to the real world. That is why I dropped out.

drumdance 11y ago

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, talks about this in his last book. From memory, I believe he postulates that there are two kinds of people when it comes to cultivating talent. The first kind is the one who is willing to try the same thing over and over and over. An example of this is learning to spin a basketball on your finger. If you're willing to try it a thousand times, eventually you will get very good at it. The second kind is less patient and gets bored repeating things. So for them it's more about constantly learning something new. I don't know that these are mutually exclusive, but perhaps people lean toward one form over the other.

mbrock 11y ago
People also seem to be different in how much they can or want to focus on a single thing or a small number of things, versus how much they want to jump around and study tons of stuff in a broad way. I'm very much the second way. The pretentious word is "polymath" but for me it's just that my attention works that way. It does seem to have something to do with being somehow fundamentally restless. I really don't want to be a graduate student because it seems terribly excruciating and I don't think I have the capacity, not because I'm stupid but because I'm restless. But I would love to hang out with graduate students, from different fields. In a utopian world, I could get food and shelter by just being a guy who spends 12 hours a day reading about different things, re-explaining them, connecting them and introducing people to different ideas. (Politically charged digression: I think a basic income would free up truly enormous potential for innovation, if the innate creativity and productivity of people were disconnected from the tedious demand for employment and funding. Talking critically about the economics of it before trying it seems ridiculous because the entire point, it seems to me, is that totally novel things would happen.)
- wellpast 11y ago
  > The pretentious word is "polymath" The less pretentious word is "jack of all trades".
  - FatalBaboon 11y ago

wellpast 11y ago

Point your skeptics to Carol Dweck's research and book, Mindset. http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/ http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/ The writing can be repetitive but the core ideas and science IMO should be read and understood by everyone especially those who think that talent is solely innate.

mekal 11y ago

maybe they're just trying to compliment you. i mean what else could they say...."great work ethic mark! your fascination with balls is astounding."

anon4 11y ago

I think this guy http://english.bouletcorp.com/2015/05/27/warriors-good-fortune/ http://english.bouletcorp.com/2015/05/27/warriors-good-fortu... probably illustrated it best how it takes skill, determination and luck. And how we shouldn't just discount the last one.

1812Overture 11y ago

There's no limit to what you can achieve if you sit around playing with your balls all day.